Advisers pumped £1.5bn onto the Quilter platform in 2020, despite the company completing two significant adviser migrations during the year.
In a trading update published today (January 26), Quilter reported that modestly lower gross sales on its platform had been offset by higher levels of retention, resulting in £1.5bn of net inflows over the year — 66 per cent higher than the £900m recorded for 2019.
During 2020, Quilter migrated some £50bn of UK platform assets to its new technology. The final migration, accounting for around 20 per cent of Quilter’s assets, will take place at the end of February.
Paul Feeney, chief executive of Quilter, said: “I am particularly pleased by the consistent performance of our UK platform throughout the year and with it delivering a good final quarter despite the major migration completing at the end of November.
“This is testament to the quality of our franchise coupled by the extraordinary planning and execution efforts from our teams to deliver a successful migration in a lockdown environment.”
Mr Feeney said the new platform would be “transformational” for Quilter and provided an opportunity for the firm to drive further business growth.
The road to replatforming has been long and costly for Quilter. The company has spent about £360m on the project since it began in 2014, and it switched technology providers in 2017.
Advisers included in the second tranche of transfers were initially expected to migrate by the end of summer 2020, but the Covid-19 outbreak pushed that date back first to October and then to the end of November.
Today’s results show Quilter’s overall assets under management and administration had increased by 7 per cent year-on-year to £118bn at the end of 2020.
The total was boosted by net inflows across the board, including some £600m from its advice and wealth management arm, supported by positive market movements towards the latter end of the year.
Mr Feeney said 2020 was a year of “unprecedented challenges” in so many respects, as well as one of “extraordinary” market volatility.
He added: “It is in challenging times like these that our advice-based model comes to the fore and this is reflected through the higher levels of client retention experienced in 2020, at 92 per cent versus 88 per cent in 2019.
“We finished the year strongly with improved year-on-year net inflows, [assets] ending around 7 per cent higher over the year, and modestly higher average [assets] over 2019 despite market volatility.”
imogen.tew@ft.com
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